In “Digital Immortality,” Neurologica presents a novel solution to transporting human consciousness into a machine without endangering the sense of self. The reward for exchanging your “meat brain” for a circuit board?

The AI brain may have hundreds or thousands of times the memory and processing power of your meat brain, so the loss of your original brain may represent a loss of only about .1% of your neurological function – negligible.

In other news about adaptation, Dave over at Cog Daily spotlights a recent study which set out to determine if humans are hardwired to remember words associated with survival. Read “Survival of the fittest . . . memories,” to learn the answer.

Breaking News in Psychology

What do cholesterol researchers and Oprah have in common, you ask? According to a recent post on Psyblog, they both believe that writing down positive thoughts can improve your health and well being. Read more in, “Affectionate writing can reduce cholesterol.”

Now that The New Yorker has caught up with the blogosphere and run a piece on the dangers of diagnosing bipolar disorder in children, Austism Diva directs our attention to the excesses of Applied Behavioral Analysis Therapy, which turns learning “normality” into the autistic child’s full-time job.

And in “A neural system for mindlessness,” Jake speculates that zoning out may play a role in “the mental continuity” of the individual, based on a recent study which found that particular regions of the brain light up when you clock out.

Thanks to science, the animal mind is becoming less opaque by the day. First, we learned that elephants can recognize themselves in the mirror, suggesting they are capable of metacognition. Now scientists have unearthed the clutch of cells in the mouse’s hippocampus responsible for “nesting,” according to the Neurophilosopher. Read all about it in: “The I’m in Bed Cell.”

Vision Processing 101

In “Interpreting hybrid images,” the Neurophilospher discusses the role spatial frequency plays in how we perceive pictures made up of “two superimposed images.”